This invention relates to a machine and method for binding individual pages for subsequent assembly in an album, such as a looseleaf photograph album.
The type of page with which the invention is particularly concerned comprises a sheet of paperboard having a plurality of pockets on one or both surfaces thereof for retaining photographs or cards. Each of the pockets is formed by a sheet of clear plastic adhered or otherwise secured along its side and bottom edges to the surface of the base sheet, and a typical such album page is shown in the co-owned Wenstrom U.S. Pat. No. 3,735,516. This patent also shows such an album page having reinforcing tapes overlapping and bonded to the side edges of the sheet, with one of these reinforcing tapes also serving as a mounting for a plurality of U-shaped staples that form hinges by which multiple sheets are bound in an album.
The economical production of multiple pages of this type has offered problems to the industry in the past. One attempt to solve those problems is disclosed in the co-owned Chou et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,620,882. In the machine of that patent, staples are applied to reinforcing tape for one side edge of successive album pages, adhesive on one surface of the tape is activated, individual sheets are manually fed into assembled relation with the tape, the assembled sheet and tape are pressed together, and successive assembled sheets and tape are advanced to a cut-off station where the tape is severed. In order to apply reinforcing tape to the other side edge of the resulting page, it must be passed through the machine a second time for assembly with tape to which no staples have been applied.
Machines constructed in accordance with the above patent have been used to produce satisfactory products, but such machines are relatively slow in operation, which correspondingly reduces the rate at which they produce the album pages. They also are highly labor-intensive in that they require constant activity by relatively skilled labor to carry out the manual operations of individually loading, unloading and reloading each successive sheet.